Isiah 1:17-
Learn to do well. Seek justice, Relieve the oppressed, Judge the fatherless, Plead for the widow.

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Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Retro Identity Politics

In this election we've seen some identity politics thrown around. It might have been done in terms of race with Obama running and certainly some are whipping up support for him based on race. And in recent weeks it's based upon gender.

See John McCain hopes to gain some of the women vote because he chose a woman to be his running mate. Sort of outflanking Obama, who chose not to pick a woman, namely Sen. Hillary Clinton, as his running mate. Even though there are those Hillary supporters who are upset about that, some might conclude that Obama made the right move here in not picking his major rival for the Democratic nomination.

And so, for younger voters at least, what’s truly remarkable,
for all the discussion about the subtext of race and gender in the
campaign, is how much of an afterthought history has actually been.
Obama had already won his first caucus by the time racial tension
entered the Democratic primaries; no one ever seemed to question his
viability as a candidate in the way they did Jesse Jackson’s
two decades years earlier. Clinton ran not as the woman in the race but
as the establishment candidate, awash in money and endorsements. The
criticism of Sarah Palin
immediately after she was named to the ticket elicited some cries of
sexism from the Republican camp, but her own biting response at the
convention centered, instead, on the contempt displayed by big-city
Democrats and reporters for small-town Americans. Attitudes about race
and sex are certain to be factors in the minds of many voters (there
must be a reason Obama fared poorly with white, working-class men in
the primaries), but they are only a few factors among many others,
rather than the decisive disqualifiers they would have been 20 years
ago. It turns out that the biggest deal about racial and gender
identity in the campaign is that, especially to younger Americans who
live and work in a vastly changed country, it isn’t such a very big
deal after all.

Maybe this is why John McCain’s selection of Palin, bold as it was, felt oddly retro — like another Republican moderate, George H. W. Bush, elevating Clarence Thomas
over all the other judicial luminaries in America in 1991. Say what you
will about Palin’s qualifications for the job (she does give a pretty
great speech), but no one will argue that her elevation to the national
stage wasn’t premised primarily on old-school identity politics, the
’80s-era idea that women pledge allegiance to the family of women more
than they do to party or ideology. Palin was elevated from obscurity
largely on the basis of her womanhood and treated by her party and the
media, during the convention in St. Paul, as if she had just won “American Idol.”
(During the night of Palin’s big speech, a CNN reporter sat at a
restaurant in Anchorage with Palin’s sister, who recalled her response
to the news of the selection: “Oh, my gosh, you’ve got to be kidding.
This is great, but this is crazy.”) In this way, Palin has more in
common with Geraldine Ferraro than she does with Clinton, her candidacy having been born of gimmickry even as it struck a blow for progress.

It will be a little while before we know whether Palin really does
appeal to the sisterhood of persuadable voters, but the early returns
suggest that the assumptions underlying the pick might have been
outdated. In a typical survey, conducted for the liberal group Emily’s
List, 59 percent of women — and an even higher number of women who
identified themselves as independents — thought McCain’s choice had
been mostly a result of political calculation. It probably doesn’t help
that McCain telegraphs a paternal awkwardness in his appearances with
Palin, as if he isn’t quite sure where he should be standing. A guy’s
guy who cherishes gridiron heroics and whose closest aides have always
been men, McCain seems slightly miscast as a gender pioneer. If, as the
old joke went, the first President Bush reminded many women of their
first husbands, then McCain may well remind them of their first bosses
— well-meaning and eager to evolve but never really comfortable unless
he’s helping you on with your coat.

You know the last three paragraphs of this piece is important, but please read the whole thing. It's pretty good, especially looking at this as a "political scientist":

In fact, Palin’s conservatism on issues like gun ownership and
abortion enables McCain to placate, yet again, the most doctrinaire
elements in his own party, while her being a woman is supposed to
signal to McCain’s admirers that he remains a maverick at heart. This
last theme is the one McCain hammered at again and again in his
convention speech. Independent voters, it seems, are to believe that,
after winning office as a conservative ideologue, McCain will throw off
his evangelical cloak and there, just underneath, will be the red,
white and blue tights of the antiestablishment superhero.

The problem with this plan is that such postinaugural
transformations are never really possible. The way you win the
presidency forecloses certain options for governing; factions you
offend during the campaign don’t want to give you any victories once
you take office, and if you then try to distance yourself from the
people who did support you, you end up with a coalition of no one. This
is largely why Bill Clinton, having antagonized much of his own base in 1992, found himself barely able to muscle a few pieces of big legislation through a Democratic
Congress, and it’s why George W. Bush, after the long standoff in Florida, never had a chance of building bipartisan bridges in Washington. If McCain campaigns on the outdated
platform of a culture warrior, then he will have little choice but to
govern on it too.

This is, after all, the point of this election business — not simply
the pursuit of power or social progress, but the task of governing.
Voters seem to understand that, which is why most are neither consumed
by their prejudices nor swept away by the promise of historic firsts.
Race and gender will influence the outcome of the campaign, but to this
point, at least, they are not the influences that count most; voters
want to know whether Obama is ready to assume the presidency and
whether Palin would have the instincts to inherit it. Twenty years ago,
it might have been impossible to have either of those conversations
without being shouted down by charges of oppression. Now it’s all
politics as usual, and that’s a kind of progress, too.